Forty-eight hours from right now, David and I will be strapped together into an MD-80 ... munching on airline peanuts, leafing through the latest issue of Sky Mall Magazine, talking quietly amongst ourselves ("You brought the rings, right?" "I thought YOU brought the rings") ... winging our way from the Bay Area to TicTac for that long-awaited, much-anticipated, relentlessly-ballyhooed occasion of occasions:
*Our Wedding Day.*
I don't know about you, but it seems like the past seven months have been the longest, slowest, most painfully drawn-out seven months in the history of Internet journaling, if not the history of the world.
(My Readers: "Yeah, it's pretty much seemed that way to *us,* too.")
It has taken us forever to get here ...
... but now that we've arrived, almost, I want to say *thank you* to all of you for putting up with me for all of those seven months. Thank you for reading me. Thank you for continuing to read me, even when I've been redundant and boring and insufferable and redundant. Thank you for allowing me to vent and brag and bluster. Thank you for helping me pick out the invitations ... and for sending me advice on wedding dresses and waterproof mascaras ... and for all of your cards and e-mails and gifts and words of support and encouragement.
This has all meant the world to me.
Of course what I neglected to tell you -- while you were suffering through seven months' worth of Wedding Preparation Chat -- is that there was going to be a QUIZ ...
- How did Secra & Ю僱êrvØ¡ originally meet each other?
- A. In a bar.
- B. In a fiery car crash.
- C. In an AOL Chat Room.
- D. In an ancient Mesopatamian marketplace, when they both reached for the same basket of pomegranates.
- Ю僱êrvØ¡ proposed to Secra on what incredibly significant occasion?
- A. National SecraTerri's Day.
- B. National Q-Tip Safety Awareness Day.
- C. Secra's 43rd birthday.
- D. The anniversary of Secra's first legal screwdriver.
- After four months of frustration, frazzled nerves, humiliating public fitting rooms, and unctuous *Customer Satisfaction Facilitators* with lipstick on their teeth, where did Secra eventually wind up buying her wedding dress?
- A. The "Ultra-Snooty Briday Fashions (For Everybody But YOU!)" Boutique.
- B. Goodwill.
- B. On the Internet.
- B. Walking six blocks to Sears during her lunch hour.
- Who would Secra most like to see show up unexpectedly at her wedding?
- A. Ishwaki & Nobudnogetti Van Schmaackenstein.
- B. The Grillaz.
- C. Her grandparents.
- D. Franz.
- What song will Secra's sister sing during the wedding ceremony?
- A. "A Change Will Do You Good," Sheryl Crow.
- B. "Furry Green Atom Bowl," Robyn Hitchcock.
- C. "Grow Old With Me," John Lennon.
- D. "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life," Monty Python.
- Who is standing up with Ю僱êrvØ¡ as Best Man?
- A. Graham, David's best friend from high school.
- B. David's brother Chris.
- C. Matt Lauer.
- D. Car Alarm Guy.
- Who is standing up with Secra as her Maid of Honor?
- A. Daughter #1.
- B. Daughter #2.
- C. Son #Only.
- D. Cranky Denver Lady.
- Secra's family and friends in TicTac have arranged for the flowers, the food, the wedding cake, the rental equipment and the photographer. Secra's brother-in-law is conducting the wedding ceremony, and her sister is hostessing. Secra has handled the airline and hotel reservations, arranged for the rental car, ordered and mailed the invitations, and -- as of this writing -- has finished 99.999% of the packing. What significant contribution has Ю僱êrvØ¡ made to the wedding preparations?
- A. He dropped the addressed invitations into the mailbox.
- B. He stood outside the fitting room and held Secra's purse.
- C. He got a haircut.
- D. He has promised to show up and say "I Do."
- Although we didn't have the time (or the energy, or the money, or the materials, or the desire) to create our wedding invitations from scratch, we did add a favorite bit of romantic prose to the invitations we ordered off the Internet. What do our invitations say?
- A. "Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- B. "This is not a romance." ~ Ю僱êrvØ¡ to SecraTerri, October 1998
- C. "Stop waiting! *I'm* your sea monkey!" ~ Earl Peterson, Michigan's Singing Cowboy
- D. "I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life." ~ Rita Rudner
- What are the *Official Colors* of The SecraTerri/Ю僱êrvØ¡ Wedding?
- A. Red, White and Blue
- B. Dusty Rose, Vanilla and *FootNotes* Green
- C. Lancôme Black
- D. All the colors of the rainbow, except for the ones that make Secra look "sallow."
- Between the two of them, Secra and Ю僱êrvØ¡ have managed to shed almost seventy pounds since they announced their engagement last December. How did they do it?
- A. The Popcorn and Cheap Chablis Diet
- B. The Public Humiliation Diet (aka, The "If We Blow It, The Whole Damn World Is Gonna Know About It" Diet).
- C. SlimFast, fruit, raw vegetables, nonfat dairy, cereal for dessert ... and BUCKETS of water, all day long.
- D. Plopping Secra's big adorable sedentary buttocks onto a bicycle for the first time since the Nixon Administration.
- Which of the following is NOT an actual recent Wedding Anxiety Dream?
-
A.
The *Oh
Shidt! I Accidentally Screwed Up My Hair Color!* Dream.
Six days before her wedding, Secra accidentally colors her hair with L'Oreal Preference #5P instead of with her usual #5F; her hair hasn't been this dark since her "I Feel Another Poem About Death Coming On" college days.
"I look like one of the RAMONES!," she wails, when David gets sees her hair for the first time.
"Don't worry about it," says David soothingly. "Everything is going to be just fine." - B.
The *Oh Shidt! I've Accidentally Invited My Ex-Husband to My Wedding!*
Dream.
Five days before her wedding, Secra accidentally suggests to her ex-husband that he "stop by and have a piece of cake with us" after the ceremony. "I don't know what happened!" she wails, when David gets home from work that evening. "One minute we were talking about allergy medications, and the next thing I knew I was inviting him to the wedding!" "Don't worry about it," says David soothingly. "Everything is going to be just fine."
- C.
The *Oh Shidt! David Still Wasn't Written His Vows!* Dream.
Secra reminds David, for the 43,897,621st time, that he may want to get started thinking about beginning to plan to consider thinking about writing his half of the wedding vows. "You can use mine as a template," she anxiously suggests, when he gets home from work that evening. She refrains from pointing out that this particular task has been on the *To Do* List since early May ... and whut the hell is the point of creating a *To Do* List if none of the *To Do* stuff gets *Done*?"Don't worry about it," says David soothingly. "Everything is going to be just fine."
- D.
The *Oh Shidt! My Period Still Hasn't Started!* Dream.
Four days before her wedding Secra is puffy, cranky, hormonal as hell, jonesing for cookies and sporting a zit on her jawline the size of a hardboiled egg ... but still no period. "Call everybody and tell them we're going to have the wedding NEXT week!" she wails when David gets home from work that evening. "Don't worry about it," says David soothingly. "Everything is going to be just fine."
* * * * * * *
- So where ARE Secra & Ю僱êrvØ¡ going on their honeymoon, anyway?
- A. France.
- B. Kansas.
- C. One drunken night at The Ramada Inn in Kirkland, WA.
- D. Beats heck out of me, but apparently there's a Whalebone Corset Museum in the vicinity.
ANSWERS:
- D, of course. Meeting your spouse in any of those OTHER ways would be just plain creepy ... wouldn't it?
- All of the above. They're all the same thing, anyway.
- D. "Sears: Where America [and Secra] Shops." And am I ever glad glad GLAD, now, that I didn't buy that stoopid eight hundred dollar Martin McCrea dress off the Internet. We would have been honeymooning at the TicTac No-Tell 6, otherwise (and eating Cheerios for dinner for the next ten years).
- D. It would be sorta cool if Franz showed up. He could show us how to do The Chicken Dance ... and we could get Smrty to hit on him, just for fun. And besides: those other people are already going to be there. In spirit, anyway.
- C. Although she's singing it à la Ms. Chapin Carpenter rather than Mr. Lennon.
- B. Graham was Best Man the first time around, Matt Lauer couldn't get a babysitter, and Car Alarm Guy is still in jail, we think. (Either that, or else somebody finally dropped a sofa on him.) Besides: we like Chris. He's a big know-it-all ... just like his brother.
- A & B. I tried to convince Son #Only to stand up with his sisters, but he didn't like the dress. (Cranky Denver Lady doesn't read *FootNotes* anymore. And she writes to me at least once a week to tell me so.)
- A,B,C & D ... although D is the only one I care about, anyway.
- A. I voted for B, but David was worried it might not go over with the "moms" in our wedding audience. That's OK. I'm sneaking it into my wedding vows, anyway.
- B. (And btw ... *FootNotes* Green is NOT the same thing as "Teal.")
- B, C and D. Plus we've indulged in lots of really athletic sex.
- All of the above. You can't have Wedding Anxiety Dreams unless you actually SLEEP, forcryingoutloud.
- Oh no you don't. If we tell you, we'd have to tell everybody. You can just wait for the Honeymoon Updates along with everybody else.